To convert or not to convert? 3D arms race heats up

When prepping to film Ghost Rider: Spirit of
Vengeance, directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor put
themselves through a hellacious fact-finding mission. The daredevil
directors tried out nearly every 3D camera rig on the market, at
one point becoming convinced they would need to build custom
hardware, bolt by bolt, to capture the type of comic-book action
they envisioned.

"We were under the impression," Taylor told Wired, "as many
people are, that [shooting in 3D] was inherently superior to
post-converting." But after their tests, they compared what they
could do with 3D cameras to what could be accomplished with
computers -- and the machines won.

"Now that the software guys are getting to the point where they
can do incredible work with anything you shoot, then why wouldn't
you just free up filmmakers to shoot the movie they want to?" said
Taylor, whose PG-13 Ghost
Rider sequel opens Friday. "The hardware guys
and the software guys are sort of in a race -- it's like an arms
race for 3D."

These days, every director working on a 3D film must face the inevitable question of
whether to shoot stereoscopically or convert in post-production.
While conventional wisdom holds that filming in native 3D produces
better results, ongoing technological advances are making directors
give conversion serious consideration.

Neveldine/Taylor remain
unequivocal about which faction is winning the war. ("Whenever
there's a race between hardware and software, software always
wins," Taylor said.) But bringing directors around hasn't been
easy. Conversion got a bad name after critics panned Clash
of the Titans' hurried 3D upgrade, but with more successful
conversions in films like Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows: Part 2,Thor and Captain
America: The First Avenger, the stigma is subsiding.

Converting to 3D saves time and headaches on
set
Proponents of post-conversion point out that turning everything 3D
after the fact makes the filming process easier because directors
don't need to worry about getting a shot perfect while on set -- or
about wasting actors' valuable time while complicated 3D shots are
set up. It's certainly something Neveldine and Taylor benefited
from while working on the Ghost Rider sequel.
The pair knew early on that they wanted a stereoscopic movie, but
they also knew they couldn't film the way they do -- on
rollerblades, off the side of cliffs -- with giant 3D rigs.

To make sure their 3D was badass
instead of half-assed, they got their conversion partner --
Canadian company Gener8,
which has developed its own conversion software called Stereo
Composer -- on board early. They used a bread-box-size device
called a Civetta (Italian for "owl" -- the name comes from
its shape) to take 3D images of each set so the conversion team
would have all the parameters needed to make each shot have all the
mathematically proper dimensions. That forethought helped the
filmmakers easily incorporate the flaming-skull effects they got
from VFX partner Iloura.

"In the case of fire and smoke, it's far superior to render it
in native stereo [but] the way those boys film is not conducive to
shooting native," Gener8 stereo producer Paul Becker said in an
interview with Wired. "So to get a 3D film with the cool volume of
fire and smoke and to shoot the way Neveldine and Taylor shoot, was
to shoot in 2D, which everyone knows how to do, and then convert,
which we know how to do -- well, I might add."

Post-converting to 3D also gave the Ghost
Rider directors more bang for their buck. Whereas films
like The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and its
sequel have a reported combined budget north of $500 million (£315 million) and Michael
Bay's 3D Tranformers: Dark of the Moon had an
estimated budget of $195
million (£123 million), Taylor said he would've been
"happy to have" the $75 million (£47.2 million) budget it was
reported Spirit of Vengeance received. (He
declined to provide the film's actual price tag.)

Making 3D rigs with a 2D feel
Even as film-conversion companies hustle to improve their software,
the makers of 3D camera rigs -- structures that hold the dual
cameras necessary to capture a stereo image -- are devising ways to
make their gear cheaper, smaller, lighter and more like regular
camera set-ups. The goal is to make shooting native 3D as
inexpensive and easy for directors as employing a room full of
nerds at a conversion shop.

At Cameron Pace
Group -- the Burbank, California, company that produces
the gear used for Hugo as well as 3D
gold-standard film Avatar -- is working on
camera rigs that will film in "5D" (3D and 2D simultaneously).

Vince Pace, who started the venture
with Avatar director James Cameron, told Wired
he expects the 5D rig to be as affordable and as easy to use as 2D
filming gear, potentially allowing directors like Neveldine and
Taylor to shoot in any style they wish within tight time and budget
constraints.

"At some point it won't require a rig
to make good 3D images, and those are technologies that we're
working on today and are actually very far along with."

This type of smaller setup would solve several problems for
directors, Pace said, and could be conducive to nearly any type of
shooting environment while taking no longer than traditional 2D
filming methods.

"You can't come in with a refrigerator and say it's the same
thing as a microwave oven," he said. "There's also a time factor --
it can't cost production more time to do a shot."

Other rig-makers are also cooking up solutions. For example,
Burbank-based 3ality
Technica, whose gear is currently being used by Peter Jackson
to film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and
was used by Ridley Scott for Prometheus, has been
updating its products to meet directors' needs.

"They'd like no rigs at all, and ultimately that's the future,"
3ality CEO Steve
Schklair told Wired. "At some point it won't require a rig
to make good 3D images, and those are technologies that we're
working on today and are actually very far along with."

Schklair won't elaborate on exactly what his company is working
on, but he said any director currently shooting in 2D and hoping
for magic during the conversion process won't get what he wants.
The simple reason? When a movie is filmed in 2D, directors can't
look at a 3-D monitor displaying the final product during
shooting.

Comments

Have you seen Ghost Rider? It is a good argument For NOT converting.

james

Feb 21st 2012

I was left with two questions. First, another Ghost Rider movie? Why? WHY?!

Second, is it even a war worth fighting? 3D doesn't really seem to have caught on in a big way. TV manufacturer and movie producers are still trying to cram it down our throats but it doesn't seem like a winner to me. Maybe they will at some point get the technology right but so far it's been unimpressive. Having seen a handful of different 3D movies at the cinema if there is a 2D option I'd rather see that and if there isn't I might reconsider. It might change once they start making films that actively use the 3D element but I'll believe it actually adds something when I see it.

Ole

Feb 21st 2012

I went to see Dredd the other day in 3D. The movie was brilliant, the 3D was awful. As I understand it, the twin lenses on a 3D camera set up are both polarised differently, and the same applies to 3D glasses, so each eye can see only one of the projected images, and the brain puts them together as we watch. The problem is that when you polarise an image, you lose reflections off shiny surfaces. If one camera is polarised, and the other is not, what you get is a 3D image with reflections visible only to one eye, and these 'floating' reflections drove me mad! Stop 3D now!

skylaird

Sep 21st 2012

Cinema is all about spectacle. In the '50s, they went all out to beat the threat of TV by introducing lame gimmicks like smell-o-vision, cinema seats wired to the mains to give viewers a tingle during horror movies, and that other rubbish thing, what was it? Oh yes, 3D. They all died out, but what remained, what was popular, were the massive screens. TV can never compete with this. The irony of 3D is that it diminishes the apparent scale of a cinema screen. It makes it appear as if it is tiny, and a few feet in front of your face, like viewing something under a microscope. Madness.